Aj stood.

  The ground shook with the charge

  of twenty-thousand warriors.

  In an eternal sunset's glow

  Aj killed them all

  with compassion in its heart.

  Inro slipped into the Vale, his only companions a single battered, unarmed Feral and his Valeer who immediately fell dead.

  The Feral snapped and clapped, gesturing frantically towards the settling Sunset Thorn as if Inro could somehow forget the massacre they'd just escaped on the other side. Inro drew the stone-hilted sword from his waist. Unlike most things in the Vale, the hungry shadows forming the blade grew more substantial in the half-light and swirled like mist along its length.

  Sluggish with the gravity of what he was about to do, Inro raised the sword, stepped, and cut through the Thorn's base. The blade passed through without resistance. His Feral backed away, shaking.

  He expected it to topple like a severed tree, but instead the Thorn unraveled, untwining into a thousand threads of shadow-stuff. Each shriveled and wilted, dissolving into flecks of darkness as it fell. The dozens of wyres bound to the Thorn twanged discordantly and curled away; severed cords on some impossibly complex stringed instrument. Only the Thorn's stump remained, a travesty with few equals in the Dynasty's long history.

  He'd ordered his best units to do the same at every other Thorn into the now-doomed verse.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "They're gone, Feral, all of them." Inro stared at his awful handiwork with a heavy heart. "Where were the reinforcements I called for? We wounded it near the end, I saw it! Just a few more men and it could have been done!"

  The Feral didn't answer, of course, but the man's flaring nostrils revealed his fear. Inro felt no fear, just sorrow and weight. Sorrow at the loss of all his valiant soldiers; the entirety of the Sunset Legions just... annihilated. The weight that of failure; all his long preparations come to naught.

  With the deliberate precision of a surgon extracting an organ without killing it, Irno detached himself from his raging emotions, regarding them dispassionately. They were a sickness, a weakness. It shamed his men's sacrifice to indulge so. One by one, Inro killed each feeling, buried it deep down until his internal battlefield lay still and lifeless as Sunset's fields.

  The weight shifted from his shoulders, tilting like a heavy maul towards those who'd ignored his urgent calls and pleas. Cold rage welled up and this he allowed, tapping into it for strength where he felt weak a moment before. This emotion could serve him.

  "Carry him." Inro sheathed the forbidden sword everyone knew he carried. "Perhaps his lifeblood will serve to gain us access to whatever verse we find next."

  The Feral glanced from the Valeer's body to Inro.

  "Play the Wretch and carry the corpse or stay and wait for the Mourne. You decide." Inro strode away with gathering purpose. A moment later, the Feral grunted along beside him, the Valeer's body slung over a shoulder.

  As they walked, Inro found some satisfaction despite his loss and the stark new reality the Book faced with Aj reawakened. He'd severed one Thorn and if anyone might destroy the other Thorns piercing into Sunset from the Vale, the teams he'd dispatched would. Perhaps he'd even find them at their fallback on Terminus. Though his legions' destruction dragged behind him with the weight of twenty-thousand tombstones, all was not yet lost.

  That entity clothed in human form would remain trapped until the next Thorn sprouted in Sunset and who knew how many centuries that might take? If Aj even needed Thorns to travel anyway.

  Inro pushed such doubts and worries away. Why spend energy on something he was powerless to know much less affect? Forward: the only direction Inro believed in. His mind shifted alignment in its relentless, slow churn. A new plan and purpose congealed.

  By the time they found another Thorn and the Feral set to work enticing it to come alive with the Valeer's lifeblood, Inro's failure ceased to be. It was not he, but his sister Rega and her puppets in the Black Court who failed the Dynasty. The Dynasty and every verse it ruled. Inro had discharged his self-appointed, centuries-long duty to the fullest and would have succeeded if not for them.

  They'd failed him, failed everyone. If the Dynasty was to survive, they couldn't fail again. He must now take control and lead the Dynasty if it were to survive this foe.

  As the unknown Thorn curled about them, he spoke a vow.

  "By my ancestors and Kin, by every Ascendent watching over every verse, by every woman and man who died in my service this day, I will reforge the Dynasty into metal strong enough to prevail against the Aj or break myself and all around me to pieces in the attempt. So I swear."

  Only too late as the Vale faded away did he notice: not a single wyre connected this Thorn.

  Next chapter: let the bodies hit the floor street

  Characters and terms

  Characters (alphabetical)

  Aida: MC.

  Aj: a long-slumbering, powerful being which annihilated Inro's Sunset legions

  Avani: Hassani's daughter, an albino

  "Braid"; a thug who accosted Aida in Jadeye

  Deai: Hassani's swordmaster, renowned for killing a Paragon

  Denault: Hassani's husband. Shipwright, Kin.

  Ghillie: a 3rd Feral who wears a primitive Ghillie suit. Carries cross between kunai and acupuncture needles

  Fallon: Aida's Seneschal

  Feral: a bone-masked woman of violence (Feral) in Aida's service. Knife wielder.

  Hassani: Inviolate agent of the Black Court

  Inro: Dynast formerly ruling Sunset

  Jaxe: Dynast, owner of Stacks. "Young", wealthy. Also has "the Pale" (an Albino)

  Parathas: Aida's skinscribe. Also a mountaineer.

  Rega: Inro's sister

  "Toothy": leader of a group of thugs who accosted Aida in Heaven's Tread. Killed by Feral

  Valeer: a mentally challenged, unkempt individual able to manipulate Thorns

  White Spiral: an older Feral in Aida's service. Archer.

  Terms (alphabetical)

  All, The: ?

  Anchorites: individuals capable of creating anchor points affixed to nothing.

  Ascen, The/The Ascendant: divinities "watching over every verse"?

  Assessor: census-taker

  Aze: swordmaker?

  Black Court: a realm of pure darkness. Also, those who rule there. Where Partaking happens.

  Blood, The: imbibed at Partaking, transforms one into a Dynast if they survive

  Book of Verses, The: collection of verses ruled by the Dynasty

  Broadcliff, Tallmarket: cities in Stacks

  Century Thread: additional threads appearing elsewhere on the body every century a Dynast lives

  Chant, The: some sort of law in the Dynasty?

  Chant of Innoculation: chant supposed to protect against disease

  Crowmen: buy corpses to return them to life and service as rotters

  Cupola Thorn: the main Thorn in the city Jadeye in Heaven's Tread, a stone dome built over it

  Currence: something valuable inside old coins?

  Current: some form of energy that powers "artifices"?

  Dynast: individual given rule of a verse if they survive Partaking. Ageless and hard to kill. Regenerative. Sustained by "the Blood"; no food or water necessary.

  Dynasty: the Dynasts who rule the Book

  Ebon: founder of the Dynasty and Black Court

  Echoseer shells: devices to allow one to "see" in the Black Court

  Feral: bone-masked bodyguards who require the essence of their master to survive. "Damned to Ferals" as a form of capital punishment. "the damned", "damned to a Feral"

  First Thread/Primus: a fresh Dynast/the first luminescent silver thread etched into their foreheads.

  Gates, The: ?

  Gonist: organ dealers and traders

  Heaven's Tread: a verse "inside a hollow rolling pin", host to Jadeye, the largest city in the Book

  Ink: home verse of the Skeinry and Keens

  Innoculist: doctors?

  Inviolate: agents of the Black Court who "serve the Black Court, protect the Dynasty, uphold the Chant, root out corruption."

  Iode: substance that ignites when crushed

  Iris: the giant portals leading between one cylinder of Heaven's Tread to the next

  Jade Eye, The: the "giant emerald" at the middle of Ocyl's Spire in Jadeye

  Jadeye: the largest city in the Book and major trade hub, in Heaven's Trade

  Jaxeday: holiday in Stacks with boat carvings, feasts, games of Fishhead, dances, and storytelling

  Jaxestack: a whitewashed stack on Stacks home to Jaxekin

  Keen: Ink warriors wearing impossibly-heavy iron armor whose power source drains color from the area about it.

  Kin: descendants of a Dynast

  Kiss, The: ?

  Letch: sect bred leech-like creature designed to stop bleeding on wounds

  Libriam: a verse

  Lineage: ?

  Linemen: workers on the Stacks trolleys who pull the cars along the lines

  Logos: ?

  Mancers: ?

  Menial: common folk

  Molt: person able to shed skins (see skins)

  Mon, The: ?

  Mourne, The: something dangerous that lurks in the Vale, "the why we do not tarry"

  Nameday: when children are named

  Ocyl's Spire: the tower home to the court of Ocyl, Dyanst of Heaven's Tread

  One-Eighth Shithole: Aida's verse. Unfortunately. A desolate place home to volcanoes and a giant dead turtle

  Pale, The: light-skinned people, conquered by Ebon during the founding of the Dynasty

  Paragon: warrior who can see the future

  Partaking: the ritual that creates Dynasts (or kills those who try). Performed by some unknown, large creature in the Black Court.

  'pillar: fuzzy Sect-bred giant caterpillar pet

  Reachers: massive, Sect-bred creatures that direct traffic and rescue unfortunates in the Sighted Path in Jadeye

  Rotters: sack-clothed, crudely-masked 'zombies' uses as pack-beasts and simple laborers. Created/sold by Crowmen.

  Sect, The: breeders of useful insectoid- and/or sauroid-like creatures

  Sunset Legions: Inro's Legions, wiped out by Aj in Sunset

  Seneschal: chief servant of a Dynast, bear permanent strings allowing them to speak and understand any language

  Sighted Path: the zero-g road down the center of Heaven's Tread

  Skeinry: iron-plated communication centers where Skeiners translate vibrations sent by wyre from other verses

  Skin/Hollow: animate skin of a molt able to move, talk, and share snatches of its experience with its molt

  Skinscribe: individuals brailled with lore, walking libraries

  Slavant: an individual who "loses much" to be implanted with an ability

  Stacks: An ocean verse comprised of tall pillars jutting up from the seas. Trolleys run on long ropes between them "affixed by Anchorites to airy nothing"

  Striders: ?

  Strings: worn or implanted wire devices that translate speech

  Subterrane, The: ?

  Sunset: the verse where Aj was 'contained', formerly protected by Dynast Inro

  Surgon: person able to remove organs

  Terminus:a verse?

  Thorn: huge, curling thorns which Valeers can use as gateways to the Vale, doorways between verses. Grow into verses over centuries

  Thrum: guide in the Black Court

  Unkillable Swordsman: a Paragon killed by Deia long ago

  Vale: "The Place Between". A realm of high-contrast black and white full of thorns and Thorns.

  Valeer: people capable of activating Thorns, barely functional of anything else

  Valeer's 'nail: crystals containing wafers that allow travel within the Vale to specific verses without a Valeer

  Verse: a pocket universe or world

  Verser Lord/Lady: agents of an individual Dynast who rule part of a verse at the whim of their Dynast

  Watter: energetic liquid similar to water

  Wicker Way: towers of stone, wood, and rope that connect opposite far sides of Jadeye

  World Spear: an immense stack on Stacks

  Wyres: lines run through the Vale between verses that allow communication between